Placing Death Under Your Feet
Christ Has the Keys of Death & Hades
Placing Death under your Feet – A New Paradigm
Rev 1: 4 -6...Grace to you and peace from Him who is and was and who is to come and from Seven Spirits that are before His throne and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His blood, and He has made us to be a kingdom of priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever.
For most people, death is something that must be avoided, must be prayed against and so on. It is associated with the height of darkness and evil and that it should be avoided at all costs. The places of the dead, graveyards and cemeteries have always been associated with the Devil or Satan. It evokes a sense of deep lose and sadness and have sent some into depression to the point of suicide. Yet we are introduced to Jesus Christ in the Book of Revelation as the Firstborn of the dead. Rev 1:17...Do not be afraid I am the First and the Last, and the Living One, I was dead and behold I am alive forever more, and I have the keys of Death and Hades. Is there something that Jesus Christ understood about death that we are still to grasp?
The scripture says in 1 Corinthians 15:25, that the heavens must retain Christ Jesus, until we have put all our enemies underneath our feet, even our last enemy which is Death. We are the feet of the Body of Christ and everything has been put under subjection to His feet. The earlier verse 23 points to the order of a two pronged approach to death. It says that, But each in his own order Christ, the first fruits, after that, those that are in Christ at His coming. So it is clear that the Apostle Paul understood both orders, personal death to the world and your soul and then corporate death to your flesh, your body that will change from mortal to immortality at the coming of the Lord when the last trumpet shall sound. It seems that He is qualifying the latter, personal with the necessity of the former corporate. He is saying that you can not only believe in the resurrection of the corporate unless you also believe in the resurrection of the personal. Therefore I die daily.
What you will also notice is that both Jesus Christ and Paul used the words fallen asleep, rather than death when they referenced this condition. Now nature is very familiar with the use of the word hibernation and they understand what it is to rest, to be in a dormant state resembling sleep over the winter while living off reserves of body fat, with a decrease in body temperature and pulse rate and slower metabolism. Animals that hibernate include bears, bats, and many amphibians. Now some creatures will go to sleep in one state and awaken in a completely different state, it is called metamorphosis. Their form has been completely transformed from one existence to another, a great example of this change is a caterpillar transforming into a beautiful butterfly. I am not going to labour over the two contrasting paradigms of the caterpillar and the butterfly, by now we should have these principals as part of our lifestyle.
Jesus Christ living in an Agrarian Culture used the seed as an example. All life originates from the Trinity, let’s take a look at Genesis 1.1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. The first Person of the Trinity that earth was introduced to was the Holy Spirit, the scripture says that He moved or hovered over the surface of the water. What was happening during this interaction between the earth and the Spirit? The Spirit was infusing within the fabric of the earth the Spirit of Life. This Life is only activated at the crescendo of death; this is a very important principal to understand. God the Father then steps in and starts the making process, by calling into existence all things on the earth, heavens and the waters. It is as if the Holy Spirit lays a foundation for the Father to build upon. The scripture says that as long as the earth remains there will be seedtime and harvest. This passage has always been misquoted with regards to financial blessing, saying that this is the principal of sowing and reaping and the entire prosperity gospel has this text at its foundation, this is absolutely inaccurate. The sequence of this process is (SEED) – (TIME) – (HARVEST). Now we all know what planting seed and harvest is. I will explain the part of time or sleep or death in the middle of this sequence, what happens during this, time.
Jesus said, “Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone”. Now I always thought that life was contained inside the seed, and I am sure that’s what you thought too, right? Well any University Professor of Botany and Biology will argue and conclude that there is life in the seed, well he is simply wrong. I have now been renewed in my thinking to a higher order by the Spirit in the mind of Christ. Now prolonged exposure to the water element and the earth element can only produce decay or death or sleep of the seed. So another point to observe is that life is not contained in the soil. Because if that was true, then we could plants pebbles and grow rocks. So there is no life in the seed and there is no life in the soil. Where then is the Life? Something happens when the seed reaches its full state of death and decay or sleep; it meets up with the Spirit of Life which was infused into the earth at creation. Death meets Life and suddenly out of death comes life because Life swallows up the death. O death where is your sting? This is how death gives way to life in the biological order of creation, because it’s the Holy Spirit that has pre-programmed this function from the beginning of time. Now this is also how it functions in the spiritual too.
Are you dying successfully? We know that when the seed begins to sprout and take root, that the outcome of the seed is exponentially greater on the other side. The principal is this, when something in the natural dies it meets up with Life of the Spirit and the outcome of that interaction results in a superior state of existence. Life after death takes on a whole new meaning. Many only have a one dimensional understanding to that statement life after death, which is when you naturally die and or your expiration date is up, then you die and go to be with the Lord, in Heaven. This is where the baptism of fire, needs to be explained, let’s get into that for a moment. Jesus understood this in a Kingdom context and that was what He was trying to tell us. Jesus died physically on the cross, so that we don’t have to die physically too. His death on the cross was a means to an end, it was not an end in itself, it was the only way for Him to leave this planet and change location. His death saved our spirits, He redeemed our spirits, and therefore we are seated with Him in heavenly places, our physical bodies will change from mortal into immortality when the last trumpet shall sound, if we are still alive, should we die before that time, then our bodies return to the dust and our spirits return to the Father. There’s just one more aspect of us that needs to die and that’s our soul. This happens daily, we die daily. So our soul is in a natural state of decay as we hand over more control of our soul life to the spirit, this is where the baptism of fire comes into play, it kills our soul.
John 10:17, Jesus says, “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it up again”. Remember Jesus said that we must take up our crosses and follow Him, He said that we must die to ourselves and to the World, so that we can be completely saved in Spirit, soul and eventually the body too. Paul said that I die daily, bringing the flesh under the control of my spirit. Romans 8:36. Now daily dying shapes our character, and the fivefold gifts have been given to the saints for that, but the next stage of dying is dying to the World, dying to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life. This is the Baptism of Fire, this is when you have to die to providing for yourself, protecting yourself, this stage of your death is very intensive and because it requires a complete change of mind, the Spirit wants to change you from the mind of the orphan to the mind of a son.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of Life, in Christ Jesus has set us free from the Law of Sin and Death. For since by man came death, by man also came resurrection of the dead, for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive. Now Paul in 1 Corinthians 15: 50 is about to reveal a mystery to us and he says this, “we shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed”. Here he is pointing to those that will inherit the Kingdom, because flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
For your body to take on immortality you must have first experienced the first fruit of death like your Brother Christ Jesus, that is dead to our soul and to the world. This is so important saints and I am distressed of the false doctrine that is being preached by false apostles and prophets, which teach about dying but will not change the structure of the Church Culture to facilitate the first fruit sleep among the Saints. They teach immortality but don’t have a context for the saints now, it is a future experience and they don’t have a clue to how that will manifest in the Saints in that Day. So it becomes a message of great expectation of an emotional hype but does not prepare and produce the reality now, it’s Pharisaic, it’s religious. To only teach the resurrection of the human body without the resurrection of the mind of Christ, first is not Apostolic Doctrine.
The sting of death is sin and the power of death is the law. Jesus died to remove the sting of death and the entrance into the Kingdom removes the power of death which is the law from our conscience souls, which brings us into liberty into the mind of Christ, for the Kingdom is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. There is a Tribe in the Kalahari Dessert in South Africa called the Bushmen, they have been living there for many centuries now and learned ways to live of the land. Now one of their dishes that is a delicacy is raw crunchy scorpion which they feed to their little babies. Now the very thought of such a meal to us in the west sounds barbaric and insane but to them this is source of protein which is found in abundance in the Dessert. They very simply catch these creatures and remove the sting from its tail; once the sting is removed the scorpion poses no lethal threat to their family and can be enjoyed as a starter portion to the main meal.
My point is this, Jesus removed the lethal poison contained in the sting of death, it has no effect on us, the Apostles don’t even refer to sin as sin when speaking to the saints but works of the flesh in the New Testament, and Paul concludes in Romans that sin lives in my members not in me, my true identity is Spirit, not my soul or my body. You will never be able to eat the scorpion of death or as the Bible puts it “Swallows up death in victory” unless you reprogram you understanding that you must take a hold of death and grab it with all of your might until it becomes sleep and rest to you and with a resolute conviction that you will awaken with an exponentially greater outcome than when you first engaged in the wrestle, for your light afflictions is but for a moment but is working for you a greater weight of glory.
The fiery trials that you must
go through are those things that God has designed to shift your perspective
from this idea of what you can do for God to making you available to God so He
can live in you and He can live through you. Suffering disabuses you of any
notion of your own perfection and you only change incrementally when-by reason
of suffering-you recognize that you must give up some area of control in your
life that you've always had. When you give up that control, God comes and He
takes it and in that place where you rule, He expands your capacity to receive
new revelation, new understanding, new insights into the nature of God.
Unless you suffer, as a believer, your soul will
always remain in control and when your soul is in control your view of God will
always be what humans can come up with about God. When suffering works its
work, your soul will be put down and your spirit, elevated and your spirit then
is able to receive, from the Holy Spirit, the fresh impulses as to the nature
of God. It is Jesus who holds the steady hand upon this baptism of suffering.
He is the one who can be trusted to bring suffering into your life when He
wants to and how He wants to. The baptism of suffering is therefore, one of the
two baptisms that Jesus is qualified to administer in your life and He does it
faithfully to bring about the necessary changes.
The purpose for my writing this hub is to encourage the believers that will face this in days ahead even as the global financial meltdown will affect many saints, houses & cars will be repossessed, you may be fired from your job, your business may go belly-up but that you should seek wise counsel from spiritual fathers and that you should stay on the furnace because once you have reached the crescendo of death, life will swallow up death and resurrection will occur. For who have suffered in the flesh have seized from sin.
“That I may share in the Glory of His Suffering and the Power of His Resurrection”
